Have you been having strange dreams?

  Gradie had been listening to distant gunfire and explosions for half an hour when Holly came out of her offid said in a loud, shaking voice: “Guys, we just got word that there’s a shooter iher building, and they’re telling us to go into a lockdown, so everyone uhe desks. Matt, get the lights—”

  The office broke out in a panic. Was this it? Was he really going to die here?

  Another explosion thumped outside. It felt like reality was colpsing, and somewhere in the chaos was a message meant for him. The phantom gun. The terrorist attack right door. It didn’t seem real.

  The feeling of having fotten something became too inteo ignore. He had to do something. So he did what he had been terrified of doing all day. He reached in the bag and grabbed the gun.

  This time, it was something more.

  FN Five-Seven. Twenty-one rounds of armor-pierg 5.7x28 ready to fug go. He could feel it fire just looking at it. All at ohe offiapped into pce around him. His life jumped off the track it had been ed to since birth and took flight.

  Hirious. He looked around at the paniothing here had anything to do with him. This wasn’t his job. This wasn’t his life. His destiny had fallen out of a cage and nded right in his hand with one in the chamber. He loved the feeling so much he ughed out loud.

  In a hidden fp ihe mag pouch, he found the phone and earbuds. There was a moment of silence as he pressed them in. They chimed and souurned. He pulled up the chat logs and opehe map. Holy shit. He was right there. He sent EP a message.

  “In building three. Moving to tunnels. Call me.”

  Matt yelled at him as he moved down the aisle.

  “Gradie! We’re still in a lockdown! Gradie!” He ran into the break room, humming darkness lit only by the microwave clockfaces, like a transition zone before the rest of his life. He pulled out the Five Seven, got it in the holster then on his hip and put the mag pou his belt.

  In the dark front lobby, police lights glittered across the lot like magic. A smile spread across his face that he felt he would never lose. He went into the stairwell and waited for EP to call him.

  When EP was sick of looking at the smoking lobby, she leaned ba her chair and groa the ceiling.

  The massive desk in front of her supported three rge monitors and was covered with papers, phones, detonators, sensors, empty energy drink s, and used coffee cups. The attic was decorated to host a Halloween party and smelled of spices and dried marigolds. There was a ini-Uzi on the desk o her coffee and a Saiga leaned up against the bookcase.

  All the windows were quadruple thid bullet resistant. The ground floor and most of the wooded, uninhabited nd around was rigged with traps and cameras and her sor-powered drones hovered above i flight paths, augmenting borrowed satellite feeds.

  Now that the noise of violence had died in her headset, the gentle sounds of nature pushed in through the windows. When she was dretting the failures of the day, she leaned forward with a sigh.

  One of the is otom toolbar was e. She jumped. How long had it been like that?

  “ you hear me?” EP said in his ears. Memories attached to the voice flooded in, bringing in pieces of another world and another him. It was electrifying. He felt ready for anything.

  “Yea. I’m iairwells. Where do you want me? I’m assuming shit is getting heavy doht?”

  “Everyone else is down. They’re moving the target through the tunnels.”

  His chest dropped out. Whatever tore through the rest of the team was esc the target right below him, and his only purpose oh was to get in front of it. He went dowairs in a hurry.

  “The door is down there somewhere,” EP added.

  “The what?”

  “The Door!”

  “I thought that was in his head?”

  “What? Didn’t you listen—”

  “Ok, whatever. Where is it?”

  “I don’t know! Somewhere iunnels. They took out the cameras.”

  Gradie stopped on the nding. The feeling of fetting something hit him again. It was too much of a ce. He had been pletely out of it until five minutes ago and now the target was right below him? He had put himself here for a reason, and if he could do that…

  He closed his eyes and reached into his memory, a it start to open. He pushed it, guided it. It was like light falling on hidden things.

  He remembered yesterday, st week, a month ago, looking for anything about the tunnels, and there it was. A few months ago, there had been loud stru noise ing from the basement. He always liked to eat lunch down there if he could, and that day he had seen the back maintenance area blocked off with a temporary fabric wall and a security guard sitting on a fold-out chair.

  “The doors in this basement?”

  “What? How do you know.”

  “I saw some stru a few months ago.”

  “You pushed memory?” She sounded surprised. He tried not to let his ego fre up and jumped dowairs.

  “How many guys are with him?”

  “Two.” Adrenali his tongue and worked out towards the rest of him.

  “Any other advice?” he asked.

  “Move fast.”

  He pushed the handle on the basement door. Locked. He reached out again and remembered getting into lockpig a few weeks ago, buying the picks online...

  He slid the thial tension and rake out of the back of his wallet and raked the lock. After he got the handle down, he waited until he was sure of the silen the other side, and slipped through the door without breathing.

  The basement was dusty and still, lit only by a weak amber glow from a thin viewport in a rge metal door. The floor was bare besides the junk pushed up against the walls and thick crete pilrs that reminded him of all the gss and steel stacked above him. It felt like the bottom of the world.

  A light flickered in the darko his left. A fshlight, pointed by someone ing dowairs behind another door. The beam caught swarms of dust as it fshed out of the narrow gss pane. He looked around for somewhere to hide.

  A few ceiling panels were missing right above him, exposing solid bess. He ran forward, kicked up the support pilr, and grabbed onto one of the exposed beams. He pulled himself up into the ceiling just as the door opened and more fshlights sed the room below him. He positioned himself horizontally, with his feet on one beam and his hands on another, and held his breath. The rge metal door opened with a sug sound. Someoepped out.

  “Where the fuck is everyone?”

  “Dead, but it’s clear now.” said the lead guard.

  “Even Anthony?”

  “Yea. For all the shit he talked.”

  Gradie held himself steady with his left hand and reached down and grabbed the gun off his hip with his right. They passed below him with the target in the ter, cradling an AK patterned shotgun. The guard up front killed his light and approached the door, while the guard in the rear shined his light at the dradie had e through. Gradie flicked the safety off, aimed at the side of the target’s head, and stifled a ugh.

  The muzzle fsh lit up the room like a rave. All three shots blew through the side of the target’s head before the guards reacted. Their fshlight beams crossed below him a awo rounds through the front guard’s face. The rear guard aimed up past Gradie’s right arm, where he had seen the muzzle fsh, and fired iy dark air. Gradie let go of the beams and brought his hands together as he fell.

  He put three rounds through the guard’s face before he hit the ground and nded in a low squat with a support pilr between him and the guard at the door. It was only a foot wide, but it was enough to give Gradie the sed he his on around while the guard stepped to the side to get a shot. As his head came out from behind the pilr, Gradie shot him uhe and the bullet came out the of his head. He fell over and kicked up a cloud of dust that danced in the crossed beams of the fallen fshlights.

  “Fuck!” someone yelled from ihe room. Gradie aimed back at the target and saw him twitg. The Five Seven spat fire four more times ahe target's head and neck a dripping mess.

  “He’s already gone, dumbass.” Said the guy iepping out to have a look. His rifle was down at his side.

  “With a fug pistol.” He smiled and shook his head as he unclipped one end of his rifle from the sling and brought the barrel up to his mouth. He dropped in a bst of brain matter and the shot echoed off the back wall of the basement.

  Gradie stood there in the sileil it occurred to him that EP had no way to see what happened.

  “You got any cameras in this room?”

  “No. Hold up your phone.” Her voice shook.

  He did and the camera and fshlight came on by themselves. He took a wide triumphant pan of the bodies, lingering oarget's crumpled head.

  “Holy shit. You did it.”

  “Now what?”

  “Go to sleep. Or eat a bullet. Job’s over.” She clicked off the line. Not even a ‘way to go’.

  He stepped over the bodies ahrough the metal door. It was a small room that smelled like weed and rust and there was a man dead asleep on the couch. In the far wall was another door, pin wood minate, faux brass handle. Just like any other office door. For no reason he could uand, Gradie ope.

  It was a long hallway, with dull carpet and flickering fluorest light that came on automatically. There was a wide tunnel oher end, unlit, that ran perpendicur to the hallway, and looked like a fotten arm of the pedestrian tuhat ected the office parks. It felt like the edge of the world, and the beginning of another one.

  He smmed the door shut. Something about it terrified him, and he had other things to do.

  Ihe fridge, he found a vial of Propofol and some syringes. He got the vein easily. In a few breaths, the world folded in on itself, and something else grew out of the pieces.

  Across the highway, a woman in handcuffs fell asleep in the back of a cop car, and miles away, a wanted scammer took sedatives with her wine and id down in an attibsp;

  Manda is about the mundaing the magical, memory meshing with imaginatio episode, Otherworld.